Anglo-Irish Treaty

The Anglo-Irish Treaty, signed on 6 December 1921, was an agreement between the United Kingdom and Ireland that provided for the establishment of the Irish Free State as a British dominion, ending the Irish War of Independence. Prime Minister David Lloyd George and a British delegation met with Irish Sinn Fein leaders Arthur Griffith and Michael Collins and agreed that Ireland was to become a semi-independent nation with a status similar to that of Canada, another British dominion. Members of the Dail Eireann, the Irish parliament, would have to swear an oath of allegiance to the King of Britain, but the Sinn Fein leaders argued that the treaty brought Ireland one step closer to independence. Enemies of the treaty, led by Eamon de Valera, claimed that the Sinn Fein leaders had sold them out and had betrayed Ireland to Britain; when the Dail Eireann ratified the treaty with a vote of 64 to 57, De Valera announced that he and his deputies were going to leave the Dail in protest. De Valera's supporters would become the Fianna Fail party, while Griffith and Collins' supporters would become the Fine Gael party; the pro-treaty and anti-treaty factions would fight in the brief and bloody Irish Civil War.